Uncle Bob wrote:I was lead to believe that RDP was originally a Linux "invention"

VNC is, yes. Some good people in a AT&T / Olivetti / Oracle joint venture research lab created it for their many UNIX-ish boxes that they had. RDP however is 100% pure Microsoft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol"Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a multi-channel protocol that allows a user to connect to a computer running Microsoft Terminal Services. Clients exist for most versions of Windows (including handheld versions), and other operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris Operating System and Mac OS X. The server listens by default on TCP port 3389. Microsoft refers to the official RDP client software as either Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) or Terminal Services Client (TSC). ..."

Another thing you might want to look at is FreeNX ... the speed is awesome ...